What we'll be talking about in 2025: Richmonder writers look ahead
How will Danny Avula do as mayor?
The new year will bring a new era to City Hall as Mayor-Elect Danny Avula takes office. On the campaign trail, he emphasized housing affordability and stopping the displacement of longtime Richmonders getting priced out of their neighborhoods, as well as the need to improve city government overall.
Those are complex issues with few quick fixes, and some City Hall watchers wonder how Avula’s nice-guy persona will translate to the hard realities of governing. Avula and his transition team say they’re up for the challenge, and 2025 will start to show what the Avula style of leadership looks like. -GM
Padel Plant opens amid tension with artists
Pickleball has been booming in Richmond over the past decade, but it's a new paddle-based sport, padel, that's taking over a prominent space on the Canal Walk.
Developers describe Padel Plant, which is scheduled to open early this year, as a "third place" for the community to congregate. The space, which is privately owned, previously served as the site of two RVA Street Art Festivals.
Muralist Mickael Broth, who also serves on the festival's board, posted to Instagram sharing his disappointment in the group's discussions with the Padel Plant developers.
"I didn't create that work to be background for some out of touch, out of town nepobabies' vanity project," he wrote.
The building's opening will bring back to the forefront the longrunning tension between local artists, who helped reinvigorate some of the city's downtrodden areas, and the developments that ultimately priced them out of those areas. -MP
Affordable housing
One of the tools Richmond is using to promote the construction of more affordable housing is the performance grant. Under these agreements, the city refunds developers any increases in their annual real estate tax in exchange for the developer constructing and maintaining a certain number of units that are priced to be affordable to people making a particular income level (e.g., 60% of area median income). City Council has signed off on a bunch of these grants, and we’ll be watching to see how many of them get off the ground. -SV
The FOIA whistleblower lawsuit
Wrongful termination lawsuits are a common occurrence in local government. But a three-day court trial set for September could get to the heart of what critics see as a lack of accountability and culture of secrecy at City Hall.
Connie Clay, the city’s former FOIA officer, claims she was fired for pointing out that other officials weren’t complying with basic transparency laws. The city says she was let go for other reasons, but the production of internal documents and communications in the case could tell a fuller story about how City Hall was operating in the Stoney years.
The lawsuit could also be an early test for the Avula administration if it reveals unflattering information about any officials still in their jobs after Stoney is gone. -GM
School construction and maintenance
At the end of 2024, Richmond Public Schools dropped thousands of pages of detailed reports on exactly what problems are facing the 50 buildings it operates. The price tag for immediate needs? A steep $43.7 million.
The school division — which cannot raise money independently — has long complained that decades of underinvestment by the city has left it unable to responsibly maintain the buildings it oversees. Under Mayor Levar Stoney’s tenure, funding to the division increased significantly and City Council in 2018 backed a plan to put $800 million toward school capital spending over the next 20 years through a combination of a meals tax increase and city borrowing.
But school construction has also been rocky politically, with 2021’s bruising fight over the new Richmond High School for the Arts (the former George Wythe High) and the controversial “Schools Building Schools” resolution being Exhibits A and B for just how sticky it can get. How the new mayor, City Council and School Board work together to address the division’s capital needs will undoubtedly be one of the most closely watched issues this coming budget season. -SV
A car-free Carytown?
At the end of 2023, the city put out a survey asking about the potential of closing Carytown to vehicular traffic, which was overwhelmingly supported by respondents.
It's always felt more unlikely than likely, given the opposition — neighbors to the west would lose a crucial artery to downtown, neighbors nearby worry about losing parking spots, and some merchants worry about a decrease in foot traffic initially.
But as the survey indicates, there's also considerable interest in seeing it happen, and it's something larger cities have successfully done in recent years. -MP
What’s the vibe on the City Council?
Departing Mayor Levar Stoney and his team have expressed pride in their mostly harmonious working relationship with the nine-member City Council. With three new council members coming in to work with a new mayor, some are wondering whether the collaborative spirit will continue. The council had several testy moments to close out 2024, including some heated exchanges over property taxes and an intensely emotional debate over whether the city should build a new animal shelter when some human needs aren’t being met. New faces in city government means new relationships being built. They could be productive and conflict-free, but there’s some concern City Council meetings could return to being the more dramatic events they used to be. -GM
School Board dynamics
Richmond’s last School Board had some complicated internal dynamics that led many community members to label it “dysfunctional,” even though several representatives argued it was an unfair characterization. While board relationships appeared to be improving over the past year and meetings became less volatile, numerous candidates this November emphasized a need for better governance practices that could turn down the temperature. Many of those candidates won, with five new members set to join the board on Jan. 1. Now comes the big test of how they will work with each other and with the four representatives who are continuing on to another term. -SV
How will Richmond-area candidates do in statewide elections?
Stoney was the first elected strong mayor who was widely expected to use the job as a launchpad to higher office. He’s trying to do that by running for lieutenant governor in a June Democratic primary, but he’s not the only local official who wants the job. State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, who represents a Chesterfield County-based district that includes parts of Richmond, is one of several candidates competing with Stoney for the LG slot on the Democratic ticket next fall. -GM
What's next for Monument Avenue?
Early momentum towards reimagining Monument Avenue, particularly the circle that used to hold a statue of Robert E. Lee, has largely stalled out.
First came a group led by the VMFA, then the city's Urban Design Committee rejected proposals for the space in 2022.
A new administration will bring a fresh opportunity for the space, but creating something that will satisfy all the stakeholders will be a tricky tightrope act. -MP
Student outcomes
The past year saw some big academic strides for RPS, with five new schools accredited and big improvements on the Standards of Learning tests divisionwide — a welcome bit of sunshine after the steep declines of the pandemic. Now the question is: Can RPS keep up those gains? -SV
The Pipeline
Richmonders love parks, and they particularly love parks that have old stuff in them that looks like it was once useful but might now be forgotten. The Pipeline Trail, a walkway perched atop a giant sewage pipe along the James River that’s crowned by an active elevated CSX track, checks pretty much all those boxes, and so its abrupt closure this fall caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
CSX, which told The Richmonder it had no idea people had been using the trail recreationally for years, has informed the city that if it wants to keep using it like a park, it’s got to make some safety fixes. We’ll be waiting to see if a formal agreement is made and whether the trail — memorialized in posters and paintings hung all over the city — can be opened to the public once more. -SV
